15
Push And Pull
Jay was pregnant. Nikki gulped loudly but Kitten preserved her cool.
“All right, we won’t ask whether ya done it on purpose,” she said kindly. “Have ya had a scan, yet?”
“No, um, why?” she faltered.
“See if it’s a boy, ya, ning-nong! Might as well know ASAP if there’s any hope of getting Michael Pointer even slightly on our side.”
“Um, Graeme did say he was furious when he found out Sybilla’s had her tubes done.”
Nikki gasped and dropped her cake plate—fortunately empty. Even Kitten swallowed, but managed to croak: “The idiot’s actually had them done?”
“Yes. While he was in Australia, actually.”
“Well, good,” said Kitten grimly. “That’s her out of the running for mother of the heir! Listen: soon as you get out of Graeme where Jerry the Jerk goes for lunch and happy hour, I’ll video the two of you and send a copy to bloody Sybilla Pointer, okey-doke?”
This was okey-doke, and Jay trotted off to the kitchen with the cake plates.
“Can you see it?” said Nikki in a lowered voice
“Nah, wouldn’t of known if she hadn’t let on.”
“Not the baby!” she hissed. “I mean can you imagine his wife actually wanting to divorce him? I mean, it’s, um, like, a position, y’know? To be married to a Pointer.”
“You’re not wrong there. I’m counting on it it’ll make her so mad she won’t stop to think about that. Besides, he’s only middle management, isn’t he? And if she’s been married to him this long,” said Kitten, not breaking off as Jay came back in, “she must know he hasn’t got the push for a top exec.”
“Who, Graeme?” said Jay mildly. “No, I know. He’s been talking about maybe working for the Sydney office, instead. I might encourage him. It’d be a clean break: get him away from his awful father.”
Not to say get him nearer to Grandfather Wong, who had push enough for twenty! Kitten replied calmly: “Good idea.”
“Um, I was wondering,” said Nikki nervously. ”Um, are you actually divorced yet, Jay?”
“Graeme isn’t either,” noted Kitten swiftly.
“As a matter of fact I am,” said Jay calmly. “Wu’s grandfather found another candidate with a well-off family.”
Nikki sagged. “Oh, good!”
“Yeah, makes it simpler,” agreed Kitten cheerfully. “Right, now if Graeme comes round and bawls all over you because she’s chucked him out and told him he’ll never see his little girls again, here’s what you gotta say...”
“Graeme,” said Jay on a firm note, holding her chin well up, “that’s nonsense. She can’t legally stop you from seeing your own children. The British divorce laws are very fair.”
Graeme’s tears dried up and he goggled at her, sniffing.
Firmly repressing a strong memory of Grandfather Wong’s expressed opinion of whey-faced Pommies with no gumption, Jay added calmly: “Besides, you’ll have our son. He’ll need you even more than the girls.”
“What?” he groped.
Inwardly quailing, Jay said firmly: “Our son. I’m pregnant. I’ve had a scan: we’re expecting a boy, Graeme.”
Gee, Kitten had been right, ’cos that was pretty much all it took! Well, there were more tears and self-recrimination. But he didn’t suggest she oughta get rid of it and he was thrilled at the idea of it being a boy—nothing to do with his horrible father, either, Kitten had been right on that score, all blokes wanted sons, even if they weren’t Chinese—and he wanted to see the ultra-scan pic and had to blow his nose again once Jay had pointed out its tiny penis—well, Kitten was right, it all just looked like fuzzy nothing, but both the ultra-scan nurse and the doc had been quite sure. As Kitten had said, it was a pity they couldn’t get married before it was born just in case the flaming experts had got it wrong after all, but getting him away to Australia’d be the next best thing. So after they’d been to bed and he’d had a come plus and another cry, Jay admitted that she was awfully homesick....
“See?” said Kitten smugly over indifferent so-called cappuccinos at a trendy so-called coffee house that didn’t know what a decent short black was.
“Yes, you were right all along, Kitten!” replied Jay with a loud giggle.
“She always is!” agreed Nikki, sniggering. “Give us another look at the ring, Jay! ...Fab,” she sighed.
Even Kitten hadn’t expected Pommy Graeme to cough up an engagement ring for Jay so soon. She gave in and bent over it, too. It was a ruby, Jay’s birthstone, supported by three small graduated diamonds on either side. Kitten didn’t bother to point out that the whole concept of birthstones was (a) manufactured in the first place and fostered by commercial interests in the second and (b) totally foreign to Chinese tradition. For one thing, she was aware that Jay was also aware of this.
“Yeah, lovely,” she agreed. “I love that deep ruby colour. You’re lucky you can wear reds, Jay.”
“Yeah,” agreed Nikki wistfully.
“I can’t wear those lovely yellow shades, though,” said Jay kindly.
“No: she looks good, doesn’t she?” said Kitten on a proud note.
The weather was slightly warmer, and Nikki was in a new fake-fur jacket over heavy dark jeans. The jacket was a very fluffy pale yellow never seen in nature with completely unconvincing black spots on it but as Brucey had told her she looked snug as a cuddly bug in a rug in it Kitten had concluded it was the right choice. Mrs West, inspired by the snaps Nikki had sent of her and Brucey looking at the horses, had been onto the rellies over in outback New South Wales and sent a whole lot of pics of Uncle Ben and the cousins, Hughie, Jake and Danno, riding the horses out on the property—and incidentally omitting all mention of the drought and the struggles most of the properties running cattle were having to make ends meet these days and the fact that Ben and Faye had had to offer farm holidays these last few years, not to say all mention of the motorbikes the cousins also frequently rode to round up the cattle. The photos had made Brucey terrifically keen about going out to Australia and in fact his father had gone so far as to contact Australia House and get the relevant forms and information sheets out of them. Not because he wanted to get rid of his only son but because, as he’d incautiously informed Kitten, it was the first time Brucey had ever expressed a real interest in doing anything. And he had a lot of contacts amongst the breeders, trainers, and racing people out in Australia: he’d get onto them as well, couldn’t hurt!
As the cappuccinos were finished a certain amount of discussion of clothes ensued, the consensus being that the scarf Nikki was wearing with the new coat, a long length of white silk patterned in yellow butterflies with just a few touches of orange and blue, was the right choice and it looked good tied just casually like that and no-one’d ever know that Kitten had found it at a flea market. And after Nikki and Jay had been allowed a small cake each in celebration to go with the second round of cappuccinos but Kitten had just stuck with the coffee, Kitten said thoughtfully: “Isn’t it funny: Aunty Ingrid’s full of get-up-and-go and Paul Warden might of been feeble enough to marry Mary, but he runs his business competently enough: how on earth did they manage to produce Brucey?”
Nikki went very red. “He’s not that bad!”
“Uh—well, he’s a lovely guy, but you can’t say he’s got push, Nikki,” said Brucey’s cousin on a weak note. She hadn’t really meant to say it aloud, it had sort of come out. Kitten was used to keeping her thoughts to herself, and being in the company of drongos was by no means a new experience for her, but a sustained diet of Melodie, Nikki and Brucey, only slightly adulterated by Maddalena, who of course had no interests in common with her, was not only very boring, it began to affect your concentration and made you careless. She’d been really looking forward to seeing Jay again but unfortunately, though still keen on the plan, Jay was so completely besotted by Pommy Graeme and the thought of setting up house back home with him that you couldn’t really talk to her. Not in the sense of holding an intelligent conversation.
“Not everybody has to have push, Kitten,” replied Nikki on a defiant note. “And if you’d of lived with someone like Mum all your life, you wouldn’t be so keen on it either!”
“No-o... But it does mean that if you take him on as a partner, Nikki, you’ll have to be the one that does the pushing,” ventured Jay.
Nikki put her nose in the air and ate up her cake. “Nah, I’ll just ask Kitten to come round!”
Alas, Jay collapsed in helpless giggles at this one.
“Yeah, hah, hah,” said Kitten with a silly grin. “You won’t have to, your mum’ll be there pushing for the both of you.”
“Not if we’re over with Uncle Ben and Aunty Faye!” retorted Nikki quickly.
“You’d have to be, I reckon. There or on the moon. Or those people Brucey’s dad knows in Victoria might be the go.”
“Which?” asked Nikki simply.
“Any! No, well, the trainer sounded okay, though mind you, get your license suspended and that’s your business down the drain—they’re all at it, before you start,” she warned. “The stud might be a goer—Polperrin, isn’t it called? –Don’t ask why.”
“Wouldn’t it be an Aboriginal word?” ventured Nikki.
Kitten eyed her drily. “Nah. Cornish.”
“Like from Cornwall?” asked Jay. “Probably their ancestors came from there, Kitten.”
Actually they’d come from next-door to Paul Warden but at this point Kitten gave up entirely. “Yeah. Well, they sound okay, and if they can guarantee Brucey a job on the strength of his so-called experience with his father, I dare say he’d be allowed in as an immigrant. That’d be a start, and you wouldn’t have to stay there forever.”
“No. Is it near Melbourne?” asked Jay uneasily.
“No,” admitted Kitten flatly.
“That doesn’t matter!” cried Nikki.
“Nikki, you’d miss the shops,” warned Jay anxiously.
“Aw, pooh! Shops don’t matter!” she cried dismissively.
Jay swallowed and looked uneasily at Kitten. Nikki West’s lunch hours, ever since she left school, had been spent without exception at the shops. She was the sort of girl who bolted down a sandwich at morning teatime or in the lift coming back from the shopping expedition so as to have the whole hour free for the shopping. Large parts of her weekends were also spent shopping or window-shopping.
“Just think, Nikki,” said Kitten heavily. “How much of your life is spent at the shops?”
“Eh?”
“Think!”
“Well, um, I s’pose I do go a fair bit... Well, if you’re working in town there’s nothing else to do, really, is there?”
Sydney was bursting with art galleries and museums but Kitten didn’t waste her breath. ”No, well, think about life on a farm or in a very small country town, Nikki. You wouldn’t be able to work, there won’t be any jobs. Just start in the morning and imagine your day.”
“Like, first thing in the morning?”
“Mm. Omit the shower, if you like.”
“Honestly, Kitten, you are mad! I’d get up and get his breakfast, of course!” said Nikki happily. “And the kids’, once they come along. Then there’d be the dishes and the housework once he’d gone to work—well, out with the horses, y’know? If he could come home for morning smoko that’d be nice. I could make some biscuits or a nice date loaf. Or an apricot loaf’s always nice, Great-Aunty Gwen’s coughed up that recipe at last, Mum says. And I can rustle up a slice any time: they’re easy!” she beamed.
A stunned silence reigned at their trendy little table in the trendy little coffee house.
“Um, yeah,” said Kitten weakly at last.
“Can you bake a date loaf?” croaked Jay.
“Yeah. It’s Gran’s recipe, it’s got golden syrup in it, but Mum and me always use marg instead of butter,” she said happily.
“Did you ever bake one for Jerry the Jerk?” asked Kitten.
“Yeah, often. He used to lap it up if we were by ourselves, y’know? Only the time his bloody office mates came over and I served it up he bawled me out after. And made me buy those weirdo Japanese crackers, y’know?”
“Rice crackers? Sakata?” asked Jay.
“Dunno. They taste like cardboard,” she offered. “Thin cardboard.”
“Didja put anything on them? I mean, did he tell you to?” asked Kitten, getting interested in spite of herself.
“Nah, that’s not trendy,” said Nikki with a sigh. “See, I thought some nice cheese or maybe some Philly with a slice of olive—well, heck, doesn’t that sound up-market to you? But he done his nut.”
“You’re well rid of him!” decided Jay fiercely.
“Too right,” agreed Kitten. “All right, go on: what about after morning smoko, whether or not Brucey can get home for it?”
“There’d be the shopping, of course,” replied Nikki serenely. “—No, you ning-nongs!” she cried to their expressions. “The grocery shopping! See, if I had the kids I’d pop them in the car—actually a station-waggon’d be more use, or maybe a four-wheel-drive, but there’s not that much room in them, actually, so I think I’d choose a station-waggon. It might be quite a drive, you don’t have to tell me, Kitten,” she added before Kitten could. “So if Brucey wasn’t coming home for lunch we might have it in town. I know it’d only be a milk bar or somethink, you don’t need to tell me,” she added before Kitten could. “I wouldn’t mind, I haven’t got fancy tastes like you, Kitten. It’d be a nice chance to give the kids a milkshake, get some calcium into them!” she beamed.
“Um, yeah,” said Kitten feebly. Okay, it all sounded like a Nevil Shute fantasy—though she was aware that Nikki had never read a word of Nevil Shute in her life—but on the other hand life in the small Aussie country towns was still like that. Much better kitchen facilities and the shops had more variety, almost everyone except the really remote Outback stations was within reach of a supermarket, these days. And of course everyone had air-con and big chest freezers. You bought a lot of sliced bread and froze it instead of baking your own, and most of the time it’d be bought biscuits, not homemade—or homemade slices with the base made from crushed bought biscuits! reflected Kitten, swallowing a smile. But that apart, country life hadn’t changed much in the last fifty years.
“What’s that smirk in aid of?” asked Nikki suspiciously.
“Nothing,” she said quickly. “Um, I was just thinking about slice recipes, actually.”
Brightening, Nikki rapidly gave them two really easy slice recipes.
“About a million calories per piece,” concluded Kitten on a weak note.
“Yes, but if he’s been out on the property doing some hard yacker it wouldn't matter,” put in Jay. “Hang on, I’ll just write that coconut one down, Graeme really likes coconut.”
Kitten had recovered. “That topping’s basically just a Rocky Road without all the chocolate. Any ole slice book’ll have a recipe, Jay.”
“Yeah, but you try finding a slice recipe book in England!” retorted Jay, producing a ballpoint pen and a tired-looking shopping docket. She wrote busily, concluding: “Yeah, it does sound really easy. Thanks, Nikki.”
Nikki looked smug. “No worries. Hey, I was thinking, Kitten, we could have Brucey round to the flat and I can do a slice! Maybe Mum’s peppermint-flavoured one, that’d be nice. A no-bake one, I think. Well, I think that’s the one. She made it for Damian’s birthday party one year. –Not instead of a cake, of course!” she added in case they might have gone mad and started to think that.
“That’d be great!” beamed Jay. “I think she might be all right living in the country or a small town, Kitten. Like, she hasn’t got any unreal expectations, y’know? It sounds as if she realises what it’ll be like, don’tcha think?”
“Yeah, it does, actually,” Kitten agreed.
“And it’s not as if it’ll be me that’ll have to deal with the horses if he does go into that business,” added Nikki happily.
“No, you’ll just be chained to his kitchen sink,” recognised Kitten wryly. “Um, what about Neil Reardon, though?”
“Eh? Well, if you’ve got his number I suppose you can ask him round, if you wannoo,” replied Nikki without interest.
Kitten looked at Jay for moral support but she was now gazing into space with a soppy smile on her cherry lips. “I mean,” she said grimly, “have ya given up on him for good?”
“Eh? Aw—that. Yes, of course. It was only a kind of fantasy, anyway, wasn’t it?” said Nikki in a vague voice.
Kitten returned with a frown: “So are you serious about Brucey, then?”
“Of course she is!” said Jay with a smile before the reddening Nikki managed to formulate speech.
“Yes,” she croaked. “Um, sorry, Kitten, don’t you want me to get together with your cousin?”
Kitten’s mouth opened and shut. Finally she said weakly: “Of course I do, ya flaming nana. But at one stage you were really keen on Neil Reardon.”
“Nah, not really,” she said in a vague voice. “He’s a pommified nit, really, isn’t he?”
Kitten looked cautiously at Jay but she didn’t seem to have made the obvious connection. “You said it. Okay, I’ll write that one off for good.”
“Good,” said Jay frankly.
“Yeah, good,” agreed Nikki. “Um, promise you won’t start plotting about me an’ Brucey, though, Kitten.”
“I don’t need to, do I?” she returned with some vigour. “No, all right, I promise,” she said heavily.
“Good. Thanks.”
“Um, what about Jerry the Jerk, Nikki?” ventured Jay, giving Kitten a wary look.
“Aw, him!” she said dismissively. “I don’t care if I never set eyes on him again as long as I live: thought you knew that?”
“No, um, getting back on him,” she explained limply.
Nikki went very red. “Aw, that.”
“Now what?” said Kitten heavily. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone off that idea, too!”
Nikki looked at her helplessly. “Um, the thing is, he did treat me rotten, only, um, well, looking back, we weren’t compatible, were we? And um... Brucey’s so nice,” she muttered, swallowing.
“Of course he is!” cried Jay, never having met him. “See, it’s all worked out for the best, hasn’t it?”
“Yeah, um, not that, exactly,” she said agonisedly.
Kitten’s rosebud mouth had tightened. “Well, what?”
“Help, you look exactly like Rose Anne when she’s got wind!” replied Nikki with a silly laugh.
“Never mind that; what?” she cried.
Nikki cast a hunted glance over her shoulder at the London trendies all round them sipping really bad short blacks that they called “expressos” and weak cappuccinos. “Ssh! Well, um, I keep thinking what’d Brucey make of it? I mean, say we go for it, I mean say we really drop Jerry in it, what’ll Brucey think?’
“Don’t tell him, you nit,” replied Kitten calmly.
“Yeah,” agreed Jay. “I mean, it’ll only be your big mouth that’ll let it out to him, Nikki, nobody else is gonna talk about it.”
Nikki was redder than ever. “No, what’s he gonna think of me?” she hissed.
Jay shrugged. “Like we said, don’t tell him.”
“That isn’t what I mean!” she hissed.
“Stop spitting,” said Kitten tiredly. “I think she’s trying to say that it’s immaterial whether Brucey actually finds out, she doesn’t want to be involved in anything that’s that far beneath his ethical standards.”
“Don’t sneer,” said Nikki in a shaking voice, tears springing to her eyes. “He’s really nice.”
Kitten sighed heavily. “And none of us is worthy to kiss the hem of his garment; all right, I get that. There is the small fact that bloody Jerry got that job with Crap on false pretences.”
Nikki just looked at her tearfully.
“Um, but Kitten, you hate Crap,” said Jay on an uncertain note.
“Ya mean they deserve Jerry the Jerk? That’s a point!” she said with a sudden laugh.
The two girls looked at her with relief written all over their face and Nikki ventured: “So you’ll drop the Jerry thing?”
Kitten frowned. “It is Hugo’s firm, though.”
“Kitten, you hypocrite!” gasped Jay. “I mean, going on about me going soft over Graeme and Baby?” she gasped, putting her hand on her tummy. “You’ve gone even softer over Hugo, that’s what!”
“Um, yeah,” agreed Nikki numbly, goggling at her.
“Look, if our kids are gonna inherit a large slice of the firm, I don’t want a dishonest creep like Jerry Moulder in it!” she hissed fiercely.
“Now who’s spitting?” retorted Nikki crossly.
“She’s got a point, though,” Jay admitted reluctantly. “I mean, if he could lie about his résumé he could lie about anything. Like, um, well, if he did something really illegal the firm could be up for millions in compensation. And, um, well, ole Michael’s got no-one else to leave it to, his slice’d come to Graeme and Baby, eventually...”
“Aw, yeah,” Nikki conceded sadly. “Only, well, I still don’t think Brucey’d approve, Kitten,” she muttered.
Nor did Kitten, actually. “No, all right. Look, let’s say we tell him, okay?”
“Tell him everything?” she gasped.
“No, you drongo! Tell him about Jerry the Jerk and ask him what he thinks we oughta do about it, okay?”
“That’d work,” agreed Jay.
“You don’t even know him!” retorted Nikki crossly. She thought about it. “Um, yeah. Well, it’s not connected to the rest of it, is it? Yeah, let’s tell Brucey!” she concluded, suddenly beaming at them. “He’ll know what to do!”
Refraining with an effort from muttering “Doris Day in a frilly apron”—not that Doris hadn’t come over, whatever ostensible character the cretinous writers had created for her, as ten thousand times stronger than any of the male wimps that had been cast as her partner—Kitten agreed: “Yeah, all right, let’s ask Brucey. –Tell ya what, Jay, you and Graeme can come over on the same night.”
“Okay, good. I’m sure Graeme will see the moral point at issue, too,” Jay agreed.
Yeah, though very probably not the point about it being their son that’d ultimately lose out if Jerry Moulder ever got to a position in Crap where he could do the firm real harm, reflected Kitten grimly as her two fatuously beaming companions plunged into happy plans for the dinner party. Well, yeah, a flaming traditional Aussie slice’d go good on top of Nikki’s Mum’s recipe for apricot chicken that she’d cut out of a mag yonks back, that was for sure. What about that slimming, healthy diet Jay was supposed to be keeping Graeme on?
Nikki did eventually notice her scowl and ask nervously: “What’s up?” but Kitten merely replied heavily: “Calories, that’s what. Is a green veggie gonna be allowed to creep into this flaming beanfeast at all?” so the girls giggled and explained happily that once couldn’t hurt but she could do some of her nice steamed broccoli if she insisted. What a pair of drongos!
Though the silly thing was, she reflected as Nikki dragged them off super-optimistically to look for recipe “books”, read mags, that drongos though they were, the two of them were very clearly on course to rule their respective hubbies with rods of iron for the rest of their lives! Boy, just like Doris, huh? Not to say, just like Mrs West! Plus and, if Grandfather Wong was out of the way, there was absolutely no doubt that it’d be Mrs Wong, Junior, ruling the roost at Jay’s parents’ place: her dad was about as spineless as your average jellyfish! Make that as your average bloke. In fact, if you came right down to it, reflected Kitten, looking unseeingly at some glossy English mag full of coloured pics of food-decorator shit sprayed within an inch of its life—if you came right down to it, she only knew two, no, three blokes that weren’t feebleized wimps that needed to be managed by a strong-minded woman. Grandfather Wong, of course, and let’s fact it, bloody Michael Pointer, and Hugo Kent.
Brucey Warden’s wide, guileless face went very red and he gulped: “You mean the chap actually falsified his CV? Deliberately?”
“Yes,” said Nikki in a small voice.
“My God, and the firm took him on?” gasped Graeme.
“Yeah, um, well, the Sydney office,” said Nikki in agony, looking at Kitten.
“They never checked him out properly. The first reference was genuine, ya see. The others, if they managed to get through to those numbers, they were his mates that had promised to give him a reference, like, not a personal reference, pretending to be his old bosses, I think that was it,” Kitten explained helpfully.
“Yeah. See, half those jobs, he made them up,” muttered Nikki, avoiding Brucey’s eye.
“Christ, the fellow’s an out-and-out crook, Graeme,” he croaked.
“I'll say,” Graeme agreed. “I can understand you wouldn’t want to shop him when you were married to him, Nikki,” he said kindly, “but couldn’t you have told Ward, after your friend Ingrid got engaged to him?”
Nikki licked her lips and looked helplessly at Kitten.
“They’d have sacked her as well: she was still working for them,” said that young woman briskly.
A tear trickled down Nikki’s cheek. “Yeah. And they wouldn’t of given me a reference.”
“It’s understandable,” said Brucey kindly. “Though Ward sounds like a very nice fellow: I think he’d have understood.
“But I’m scared of him!” she wailed, suddenly bursting into tears.
Jay and Graeme had been honoured with the two-person sofa in the girls’ inadequate, cramped little flat and the rest of them were perched on an assortment of chairs ranging from an actual deep armchair to a couple of mismatched dining chairs. Brucey had been awarded the armchair on account of his long legs. He got up and came to put an arm awkwardly round Nikki’s shoulders. “Don’t cry, Nikki. No-one’s blaming you.”
“There isn’t any reason for her to be scared of him,” noted Kitten detachedly, once the tears had more or less dried up. “He’s a lot older and a boss, that’s enough for her.”
“Shut up, Kitten; we can all see that,” replied Brucey mildly. He gave Nikki’s shoulders a last squeeze and went back to his armchair. “I think we’d better do something about it, Graeme.”
“It is only hearsay, of course,” ventured Kitten.
“Honestly, Kitten!” cried Jay crossly.
“Yeah, thought I just told you to shut up?” agreed Kitten’s cousin mildly.
“But don’t you see, Jerry’ll say Nikki made it all up for spite because he left her!” she cried.
“Then the minute they start checking out the firms he claimed he worked for, they’ll find out she didn’t,” replied Brucey calmly.
“Yes. I’m sure I can persuade them to take it seriously, Kitten,” said Graeme kindly. “I’ll speak to Jerry’s manager tomorrow.”
“Good,” agreed Brucey. “One doesn’t like to think of the chap losing his job, but if he got it through a deliberate deception in the first place, I’m afraid he deserves to lose it.”
“Absolutely!” agreed Graeme on a grim note.
“Yes,” the three young women agreed meekly, looking at them gratefully.
“That’s that, then, and you’re not to worry your head over it any more, Nikki,” said Brucey with his warm smile. “Now, what about another round of drinks, before you serve up that delicious-smelling meal you’ve cooked for us?”
“Yes, um, Kitten did help me with the chicken,” Nikki admitted, very pink and smiling.
“Only a bit,” said Kitten honestly. “She did the pudding herself, though. And the avocado and prawn starters,” she added on a dry note that her innocent audience missed.
“Ooh, avocados! Goody, I love them!” declared Brucey, beaming. He got up. “No, stay there, girls, Graeme and I’ll get them!”
Meekly the girls sat back and let the men get the drinks. Though Kitten did note: “You definitely wanna come out to Australia, Brucey, avocados are practically a staple part of the diet, and if you’ve got a decent garden, you could even have a tree.”
“Yeah, Aunty Jill’s got one,” Nikki agreed happily. “It bears like billyo, but she’s right, you gotta have a decent garden: they’re big trees. Mind you, they take twelve years to bear, Mum reckons.”
Kitten shook her head. “Nah, that’s only if you grow them from seed. Buy a decent-sized one from a good nursery, it’ll start fruiting in a year or two.”
Graeme came over to her with brimming glass. “This is a leg-pull, right?”
“No, of course not.”
“But I thought they were a tropical fruit?
“Australia’s got tropics,” said Kitten drily. “But they’re only semi-tropical, actually.”
Brucey presented Nikki with a brimming glass. “So, does your Aunty Jill live somewhere lovely and semi-tropical, Nikki?”
“Bankstown!” gasped Kitten, collapsing in giggles.
Nikki glared. “Shuddup, ya clot. Well, there is quite a lot of industry there, y’know?” she sad to Brucey’s puzzled face. “But it’s nice where they are, quite near the uni campus.”
Kitten wiped her eyes. “It’s in Sydney, Brucey. Well, within the Sydney metropolitan area. Nominally a separate city.”
“Sydney’s very spread-out,” added Jay kindly.
“I see,” he said weakly.
Graeme winked at him. “I tell, you it’s terrifically exotic out there! Even the ordinary sandwich places! Well, I mean, talking of avocados, we went to one little place that served a miraculous mixture of chicken and avocado with bacon and bean sprouts of some kind in a terrifically exotic-looking bun, for no more than any other mixture: under five dollars!”
“Um, ten quid?” he ventured.
“No, other way!” said Graeme, grinning. “About two pounds fifty P.”
“Um, yes,” admitted Jay. “We went to The Sandwich Box.”
“Aw, yeah, it’s near the building!” agreed Nikki. “Yes, that’s an ace mixture, eh? I wouldn’t of said they had exotic buns, though.”
“It was a lepinja roll,” said Jay on a weak note.
“That’d be right: heavy on the carbs,” noted Kitten. “Well, at least he avoided the one they do with cream cheese as well as the avocado and chicken.”
“Kitten, we’d been walking round Sydney for hours!” protested Jay with a weak laugh.
“All right, I’ll let you off this time. Anyway, Brucey, avocados are pretty cheap in Sydney.”
“Goody, I’ll fill in those forms Dad got me!” decided Brucey, laughing.
The evening ended with Jay and Graeme going off happily in a taxi, Graeme not neglecting to thank Nikki for the wonderful dinner and to assure her kindly that she wasn’t to worry any more about her ex, he’d take care of it, and with Nikki and Brucey retiring to Nikki’s room.
Kitten went into her own room and put some earplugs in her ears. Not that she really cared how much noise they made—and by now she knew that in any case it wouldn’t last long. Once she’d undressed she switched the light out but she didn’t get into bed; she went over to the window, drew the curtain back and stared out at a dim view of the next grimy-looking apartment block with only a few lights showing, and beyond that the tops of more apartment blocks, backed by the permanent London night-time glow in the sky. “What a load of flaming nongs,” she muttered.
In her cot next to the narrow single bed Rose Anne, who’d slept like an angel through all the giggling that had gone on throughout the evening, not to mention Nikki’s choice of background music, gave a little snort. Kitten went over to her. “I just hope to God you’ve got Hugo’s brains as well as mine,” she muttered, “’cos if I have to live with one of them, I’ll go flaming barmy!” She bent over and very gently kissed her satiny forehead. “Don’t worry,” she assured her under her breath: “I’ll make him change his will if it’s the last thing I do!”
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